CHIANG MAI, Thailand — As the world's attention stays fixed on the Middle East and Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees are marking a grim anniversary largely unnoticed.
Nine years ago this week, a military crackdown in Myanmar drove them from their homes into Bangladesh, in what the United States called a "genocide."
And still they are arriving. Even as governments discuss whether those in the camps might eventually return, more Rohingya continue crossing from conflict-torn Rakhine state into southern Bangladesh.
Despite more than 1 million people languishing in sprawling camps for almost a decade, as conditions deteriorate and aid shrinks, talk of repatriation is premature, according to analysts. The more immediate challenge is stopping more people from being pushed out.
"Forget about going back right now; people are still coming in, and nobody seems to talk pragmatically about that," independent researcher Jessica Olney, who has worked with the Rohingya for a decade, told NPR.
Mass exodus
The exodus began Aug. 25, 2017, when Myanmar's military and armed Rakhine civilians burned hundreds of Rohingya villages and killed at least 6,700 people in a single month, according to Doctors Without Borders. Between 700,000 and 750,000 people crossed into Bangladesh in that wave alone.
Today, roughly 1 million live in what has become the world's largest refugee settlement, with 200,000 more elsewhere in the country. More than half are children.
Bana Rashida fled in 2017 as soldiers fired around her family. Her husband, Mohammad Yunus, broke his leg falling from a high bank during the escape. He now walks with a heavy limp and cannot work, leaving Rashida to support their five children alone.
NPR visited their shelter in Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox's Bazar in late April ahead of the anniversary. Fires had recently gutted parts of the camps; months later, monsoon downpours would trigger deadly landslides around its tarpaulin-and-bamboo shelters.
"My life is very difficult," Rashida told NPR. "Now that we don't have enough income, I can't provide for them. I want to give my children a good education, but I can't afford it."
Her hope was modest: a sewing machine and the skills to use it. Yunus has given up on returning to his farmland in Rakhine state. "Without security and international backing, we aren't able to return," he said.
No path home
That security shows little sign of arriving. Myanmar's 2021 military coup ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and plunged the country into civil war. Fighting between the ethnic Rakhine group the Arakan Army and Myanmar's junta over control of Rakhine state forced more Rohingya to flee.
The Arakan Army now controls most of Rakhine and stands accused of its own abuses against Rohingya civilians, while a junta blockade has halted food, medicine and aid, driving hunger across the territory.
Shari Nijman, a Bangladesh-based spokesperson for the U.N. refugee agency, said 154,000 more Rohingya have arrived in the camps since 2024, a flow that continues as conditions in Rakhine "remain extremely unstable."
"After nine years, it is incredibly difficult for the Rohingya to hold onto hope that this will ever end," Nijman said.
Each year that passes, commemorations grow as people "make an effort to keep Myanmar alive in them," she added.
Some children have now spent their entire lives in the camps, while young Rohingya, stuck in limbo, despair over their own future.
"Without international attention, it becomes harder for them to believe there's an end to this suffering," she said.
Fraying lifeline
Barred from legally working in Bangladesh, Rohingya depend almost entirely on humanitarian assistance. Amid competing global crises and shifting donor priorities, that safety net is fraying.
In 2023, funding shortfalls forced U.N. World Food Program rations from $12 a person per month in March to $8 by June, even as 40 percent of children under five were already chronically malnourished, according to the U.N. It was returned to $12 by 2024, but this April it was slashed once more, this time to as little as $7 for some people under a new tiered system.
As conditions deteriorate, some refugees are risking deadly 1,000-mile journeys by boat to Malaysia. Others are being drawn — sometimes forcibly — into Myanmar's civil war or toward Rohingya militant groups and criminal gangs, which rights advocates say operate with impunity.
Olney said Washington should help fund the humanitarian response, press Bangladesh to open livelihood opportunities for refugees, and get aid to Rakhine, including territory now held by the Arakan Army. The group, she said, has seen "very little international engagement" despite controlling most of Rakhine.
"Because of the lack of engagement, there's no pressure and little visibility," she said.
The Trump administration pledged $73 million in new aid for Rohingya refugees through the U.N. World Food Program in March 2025, followed by a further $60 million pledge for the Rohingya that September, amid fears that funding cuts could deepen the crisis facing the world's largest stateless population. That falls short of the $300 million the U.S. gave in 2024, amid a broader cut to U.S. foreign aid.
In May, the U.N. and the Bangladesh government launched a $710.5 million appeal to cover food, shelter, health care, education and protection services, a request already a quarter smaller than the year before. Even so, donors have covered only around 66% of it so far.
Without restored aid or the chance to work, Olney warned, refugees are increasingly pulled toward illicit economies, gambling or dangerous boat journeys to Malaysia, exposing them to greater risk of human trafficking.
"It's going to achieve a regional security crisis, which we already have, but it will get worse," she said.
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